BRITISH PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION AQA PHILOSOPHY UNIT 3: MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Transcription

1 BRITISH PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION AQA PHILOSOPHY UNIT 3: MORAL PHILOSOPHY September 2013

2 Introduction This topic concerns philosophical aspects of right and wrong and the idea of value. Moral philosophy is normally divided into three areas: Meta-ethics This is the theory of moral language, including the meaning and function of moral words. What are moral words for and what (if anything) do they represent? Can moral statements legitimately be described as 'true' or 'false' and, if so, how is their truth and falsity determined? Substantive moral theory This concerns different theories of what actually is right and wrong. Applied ethics This is about the application of moral ideas to real-life problems such as abortion,euthanasia, social justice and the environment. The first two main sections of the guide are about meta-ethics. The first considers the nature of moral truth and how it is determined. The second examines the possibility that moral truth does not even exist. The last section turns to substantive moral theory and applied ethics. Three major moral theories are explained and discussed: utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. Then, to illustrate the practical application of each theory, their implications for a particular real-life issue (abortion) are discussed. Moral truth 1. Platonism Before looking at Plato's theory of moral truth, it is worth mentioning, for purposes of contrast, the view that moral truth is determined purely and simply by the wishes of God. According to this view, whatever God wishes to happen is by definition 'right' and whatever he wishes not to happen is by definition 'wrong'. This is one form of what is known as divine command theory. Obviously this theory is not likely to appeal to atheists or agnostics, at least if they wish to retain some kind of commitment to morality. It is true that an atheist might accept the definition and then conclude that there is no moral truth because God does not exist. But more often, atheists will say that moral truth does not depend on God and so the non-existence of God does not threaten it. But the proposed conception of moral truth creates difficulties for theists as well. If moral goodness just is accordance with the wishes of God, it would seem to be tautological to say that God wishes only good things. But theists usually think that God should be worshipped at least in part because he is supremely good, in which case his goodness could not be a mere tautology. From this point of view, a more satisfactory account of moral truth would be that it obtains independently of God. One such view is that of Plato. Plato's view of moral truth likens it to mathematical truth, so let us briefly consider that first. Most of us know a certain amount of simple mathematics. But we know these things without ever having observed any mathematical objects such as numbers or mathematical shapes such as triangles. True, we do see in the observable world structures that approximate to triangles. But they are not real triangles, for their lines always have some thickness and they are never perfectly straight. While such things may help us to think about perfect mathematical triangles, they are not 2

3 the mathematical triangles themselves. So how do we know things about the latter (e.g. that all their interior angles add up to 180 )? Plato's answer is that we learned these things in a former life. What we see in this life are mere imperfect copies of these perfect objects. He called the perfect objects forms. And just as there is the form of the perfect triangle, so there is also the form of the Good (and of other qualities), to which things in the observable world approximate by being partially, but not wholly, good. Few today would take seriously the idea that we had former lives in which we were acquainted with the various forms. But the general gist of Plato's theory that we have some innate concept of goodness that does not depend on empirical observation is one that has lasted longer. When I talk about 'Platonism' or 'Platonistic ethics', I will be referring to this idea detached from the implausible theory of a former life. A further important aspect of Platonism is the thesis that while we all have some basic concept of goodness, some of us have this concept more clearly and accurately than others. This is because philosophical reflection can improve our grasp of the Good. Hence competent, practising philosophers according to Plato will have acquired deeper and truer moral beliefs than ordinary people. This is sometimes known as moral elitism. Plato drew farreaching conclusions from it. He thought that society was best run by 'philosopher kings' who would have the wisdom and knowledge to enact laws that would enable all people to live together in an ordered and just society. Many have been attracted to Plato's meta-ethical theory (which of course we have only briefly sketched here) because it seems to secure for moral goodness and rightness a certain objectivity. Morality is not for Plato (as it seemed to be according to his opponents of that period, the Sophists) a mere matter of opinion or feeling. It is independent of human sentiment, grounded in the perfect world of the forms. On the other hand, many have found problems in Plato's view, such as: Moral elitism seems objectionable to those who think that there are no 'moral experts' and that we are all potentially capable of working out for ourselves what is the right thing to do. According to Plato, moral perfection is entirely knowledge-based. If you know and understand the form of the Good, you will know exactly what to do and you will do it. Bad behaviour results only from ignorance. But this ignores the fact that morality is not only about knowledge, but also about motivation. You may know what is the right thing to do, but still not do it because of what is called 'weakness of will'. This seems to be a real phenomenon, one that Plato's theory appears to reject. 2. Naturalism A completely different meta-ethical theory is known as naturalism. Naturalists react against what they see as obscurity and mystery in Platonism. It is quite hard to understand what the form of the Good actually is. It is supposed to be something different from individual good things and yet 'inheres' in them. Perhaps it is simply the abstract property of goodness, but the problem with this interpretation is that it would not give a special status to perfect goodness, for if there is an abstract property of perfect goodness, why shouldn't there be abstract properties for inferior levels of goodness as well? Some of the claims made about the form of the good also provoke scepticism. It is independent of the observable world, has always existed and will always exist. Can there really be such a thing? Such scepticism extends beyond Plato's own theory to approaches that are broadly platonic in the sense that they locate the source of values in a realm beyond the senses. After all, when we decide whether something is good, we appeal to features of it that can be observed either 3

4 directly or indirectly. For example, we might say that a person is good because they are kind, honest and brave. Although we cannot directly observe their kindness, honesty and bravery as such, we can observe the actions that display these qualities. To take another example, we might say that an action is morally wrong because it is cruel and the latter can be known by observing the action and its effects on people. This suggests that we might be able to define moral words like 'good, 'bad', 'right' and 'wrong' in terms of 'natural', that is, observable, properties. This is the thesis of naturalism. What would the definitions look like? Perhaps a 'good person' just means a person who is kind, honest and brave and a 'wrong action' is one that is cruel, dishonest or cowardly. But there are a number of serious problems with such definitions: People's conceptions of what counts as a good person or wrong action change over time. For example, as Derek Parfit has pointed out, the vast majority of people once thought that chastity was an essential attribute of a good person, whereas now it is probably only a minority of people who think this. But this surely does not mean that the meaning of the word 'good' has changed. It is rather that people's ways of determining when goodness is present in a person's character have altered. In effect, the proposed definitions give 'lists' of attributes that constitute goodness or rightness (or whatever it might happen to be). But surely these attributes have something in common and it is precisely that which constitutes the real meaning of the moral word concerned. At least part of the aim of the definitions is to explain moral concepts in terms of non-moral ones, but words like 'kind, 'honest', 'brave', 'cruel', 'dishonest' and 'cowardly' are actually moral words, as they already reveal certain particular stances of approval or disapproval. The lesson we need to draw from all this is that the naturalist has got to find a more plausible way of defining the moral words, one that does not just depend on giving a list. Before proceeding, though, we should mention one complication. The word 'good' can be applied to different sorts of things, not just to people (as we have been assuming in the above discussion) but also to objects, states of affairs and so on. In application to a person, it describes the person's character or personality, but clearly it does not do this in application to objects, states of affairs, types of behaviour or institutions. A complete naturalistic account of the meaning of 'good' (not to mention all the other moral words) would need to cater for all these types of uses and we shall not attempt this here. But here are some possible candidate definitions for the meaning of 'good' as it applies to types of behaviour or institutions: 'Good' means 'conducive to human survival'. 'Good' means 'tending to satisfy human desires to the greatest degree possible'. 'Good' means tending to satisfy the desires of a fully-informed, rational agent. These definitions clearly vary in terms of plausibility. But what we are interested in here is the type of definition involved, which defines goodness in terms of properties that can be detected, directly or indirectly, by observation. According to British philosopher G.E. Moore ( ), any definition of 'good' following this sort of pattern, that is, attempting to define the word in terms of factually verifiable properties, must be wrong. It represents what he calls the 'naturalistic fallacy'. In order to show that all such attempted definitions are defective, he uses the open question argument. This is really quite a simple idea. To illustrate it, take the first definition of the three above. Now 4

5 suppose that something X satisfies that definition: that is to say, it is conducive to human survival. Now consider whether someone who thought this could meaningfully ask: 'Is X good?'. In other words, when it is admitted that something satisfies the definition, could it still be an open question whether it is in fact good. It is clear that it could. And the same is true of each of the other definitions and indeed of any definition of 'good' that might be given in terms of factually verifiable properties. This is not to deny that some of the possible definitions are more plausible than others. The point is that whichever set of properties is chosen as the basis of the definition, it would still be intelligible to ask whether something satisfying that set of properties was good if someone did ask this, we would know what they meant, even if we thought their question absurd. (Contrast this with someone who says: 'I know he's an unmarried man, but is he a bachelor?' This question makes no sense given the standard definition of the word 'bachelor'.) It follows, Moore argues, that no set of factually verifiable properties can give the meaning of the word 'good'--or of any other moral word, for that matter. If this is granted, then the attempt to 'naturalise' morality fails. In fact, Moore describes goodness as a 'non-natural' property. It is a real property that things can have or lack, but their doing so is not a matter of possessing or lacking any particular set of observable or verifiable characteristics. Moore's position is often expressed by saying that no 'ought' follows from an 'is'. In other words, however detailed and subtle a description we might give of the facts of a situation, it would never be enough to prove that a particular moral position was the correct one, as it would always be coherent or intelligible for someone to accept all these facts, but take a different moral position. But Moore's idea that goodness and other ethical properties are 'non-natural' can seem strange. After all, the non-naturalist doesn't deny (because it is clearly true, as we saw above) that people and things have the moral properties they do purely in virtue of the factually verifiable properties that they possess. But how can there be properties of people and actions that are based on natural properties in the way suggested, but not actually natural themselves? Are there other, perhaps clearer, ways of explaining how moral properties depend on the facts of the situation while avoiding crude naturalism? Two that have been proposed are: The 'relational' theory: moral truth is based on relational properties which provide reasons for (or against) action. The theory that moral properties are analogous to secondary qualities. To explain the first theory, consider the judgement that the death penalty is wrong because it is excessively cruel. As we saw earlier, words like 'cruel' already incorporate a moral stance: if someone describes an action as cruel, we can presume that they disapprove of it. But arguably, this 'bias' can in principle be removed by replacing the word 'cruel' by a more factual account of what cruelty actually involves (very roughly: causing suffering for another person or creature). Then the relational theory can be illustrated by saying that the truth of the statement 'Cruelty is wrong' is based on a relation between cruel actions (neutrally conceived) and individual people (or other moral agents) that gives them a reason for not doing these sorts of actions. This relation will be some form of disapproval or rejection. Notice that this account does not view the wrongness as a simple property of the actions themselves. The same actions will not be wrong in relation to beings who, unlike us, do not reject cruelty. It appears to follow that this theory is a form of moral relativism. (Moral relativism will be more closely examined in the section entitled 'Denying Moral Truth'.) The second theory is more sophisticated. To understand it, recall the distinction between primary 5

6 and secondary qualities. The primary qualities of an object such as length, width and weight are the truly physical properties that would figure in a scientific explanation of that object's behaviour. The secondary qualities are those that would not figure in any such explanation examples include colours, textures and pitches. Science never explains any physical phenomenon in terms of colour. In a sense, colour and other secondary qualities do not exist as far as science is concerned. (This is not to deny that the perception of colour etc. might be important in a biological explanation, but that's another matter.) What exactly does a secondary quality, such as red, consist in? A popular suggestion takes the subjective 'redness' of a sensation as basic and then defines a 'red object' as one that is disposed to produce red sensations for appropriately equipped perceivers under certain circumstances. It is argued that all secondary qualities are, in a similar way, dispositions to produce sensations. (Of course, the ultimate explanation of such dispositions will lie in the primary qualities of the objects.) How does this help with meta-ethics? Well, just as science makes no mention of secondary qualities, so it also lacks any reference to moral properties. There is no place for values in the subject-matter of science. (Of course the social sciences do often refer to the values that people accept or believe in, but this no more involves reference to real values than the statement that Jim believes Pegasus is hungry refers to a real winged horse.) However, like secondary qualities, the moral properties of objects could be treated as dispositions. For example, 'good' could be said to be the property of being disposed to give rise to certain kinds of responses in certain kinds of creatures. These would be responses of approval or perhaps some inclination to protect or promote the person or object described as good--the details needn't concern us here. What is important is that the defender of this view seems to be able to reconcile the fact that the subject-matter of science is value-free with the idea that there is nothing mysterious or 'non-natural' about goodness and other ethical properties. There is no more mystery here than there is in the case of colour and other secondary qualities. But there are still difficulties. For one thing, it is not clear that this theory avoids Moore's open question problem. For it would seem perfectly intelligible to say 'X would give rise to positive responses in certain creatures, but it is not actually good', and this should not be intelligible if the secondary quality theory is true. Another point is that, like the relational theory (which it obviously resembles to an extent), this theory does not seem to steer clear of moral relativism. Or if it does, then this is only by some kind of 'cheat', as it defines goodness in terms of responses from certain sorts of creatures only and it might be asked why the responses of these creatures should be privileged over those of others. (For example, 'normal people' may respond in a positive way to those who are brave, honest etc. and so call them good, but what is special about their responses that makes them more legitimate evaluators than those who disapprove of such individuals?) 3. Other issues We have looked at two very different meta-ethical theories: Platonism and Naturalism. The rest of this section will briefly look at three main issues that arise in relation to both theories: the problem of moral knowledge; the possibility of agreement over moral truth; and the extent to which such truths can motivate particular actions. (a) Moral knowledge We have looked at what sort of thing moral truth is, but what about the question of how we can come to know particular moral truths? How do we know, for example, that it is generally wrong to 6

7 lie or to be unkind? Of course the answer depends to a large extent on the style of theory that we adopt concerning moral truth. If we are naturalists of some kind, we will probably think that there is no special problem about moral knowledge. For naturalists think that moral knowledge is a form of factual knowledge about the world and so to get it we must apply the normal methods that we use to find out about the world around us, which is basically a combination of observation and reason. If, for example, we think that 'good' means 'conducive to human survival' then, in order to find out what is good, we need simply apply our normal methods of observation and reasoning to determine what is conducive to human survival. There is no necessary expectation, by the way, that this is always going to be easy. While there will be some easily verified instances (for example, consuming food in moderation), there will also be cases in which it is difficult to know the answer. For example, is capitalism conducive to human survival (in the long term, that is)? The answer is not obvious and reasonable moral agents can disagree. Sometimes it is easy to tell whether something is good; sometimes it isn't. As we saw, Plato believed that knowledge of moral truth was a kind of remembering of things first encountered in a previous life. What about more recent non-naturalists? As we saw, Moore believed that goodness was a non-natural property. This does not in itself necessarily mean that we know it by 'non-natural' (supernatural?) means. After all, Moore recognises that it is in virtue of its natural properties that a thing is good or bad and it is by natural (empirical) means that we know the natural properties of objects. On the other hand, because of the open question problem, Moore would also say that, for any good thing X, it is possible that a person could know all the relevant natural properties of X and yet not know that X was good--in which case, the question arises: how is this additional knowledge acquired? Is it by means of some special 'moral sense', analogous to the familiar five senses that we use to determine natural properties? This would put the non-naturalist in an awkward position, for there appears to be no scientific evidence for the existence of any such dedicated moral sense. Of course, there is such a thing as 'conscience' and no doubt it can be studied scientifically, but it seems likely, on the face of things, that conscience is some form of emotional response rather than a moral sense as such. (b) Moral agreement It hardly needs pointing out that morality is a great source of controversy. Apart from a few very basic principles (such as those proscribing lying and murder), nearly all the content of any actual moral code would meet with dissent--sometimes passionate dissent from other quarters. On the other hand, some degree of moral agreement is one of the goals of ethics it is highly unsatisfactory, even dangerous, if we all think differently about such important matters as the death penalty, the environment and the morality of warfare. I want to look briefly at how the meta-ethical approaches we have looked at so far would compare on the question of moral agreement. Platonists would maintain that agreement is always possible in principle: it is to be achieved by knowing the form of the good intimately and such knowledge is the chief aim of the philosophical elite within society. Of course, those who try to think about moral matters but lack the necessary philosophical insight will no doubt fall into much confusion and disagreement. But Plato favoured a strict allocation of appropriate roles to different members of society and he would have said that those not suited to fundamental moral deliberation should not be attempting it, but should instead take their guidance from the 'moral experts' (the philosophers). In our day and age, a much more democratic approach is normally preferred. Most assume that it is, within certain limits, valid for anyone to decide for themselves what is the morally right thing to do. However (and I suggest this only as a possibility for discussion), perhaps it could be said that things have swung too far away 7

8 from Plato in this regard. Perhaps we do not give enough weight to the likelihood that people's moral opinions will be worth more if they know more of the relevant facts and have thought more deeply about them. Contemporary non-naturalists (often referred to as intuitionists) usually maintain that, although there may be some disagreement about moral matters, there is also a high degree of consensus about the basic principles, since every normal person has the required moral intuitions. In fact, an intuitionist might argue that moral disagreement is really factual disagreement in disguise. We might disagree about the morality of the death penalty, for example, because we disagree about its consequences (whether it is an effective deterrent, perhaps), not because we differ on the moral principles involved. This is an attractive view, but not a very plausible one. For although there is indeed a fair measure of agreement about the basic moral principles when stated in broad terms (e.g. that it is wrong to kill the innocent), disagreement arises in their application. (Is it morally acceptable if civilians are the predictable, though unintended, target of military action in a 'just war'?) Some of the reasons for this disagreement may be factual, but not all of it is, since people often persist in their moral disagreements even when all the relevant facts are known to all parties. Finally, what of naturalism? Naturalists would object to the very contrast between 'factual' and 'moral' disagreement, as for them, disagreement about what is right and wrong just is disagreement about certain facts. This view is attractive in a different way, for if the only obstacle to moral agreement is factual disagreement, the former should be much more attainable than we might have supposed. However, the theory comes to grief when confronted with Moore's open question argument, as well as with the observation concluding the previous paragraph. There is more to be said on the issue of moral disagreement, but it depends on the issue of relativism, which will be examined later. (c) Motivation of actions It is often said that morality is ultimately about action, about what we should or should not do. But then this raises the question of how, in the different theory-types that we have been examining, actions are motivated. It is useful to mention here the idea of moral internalism. This is the thesis that if one accepts a moral view (for example, that such-and-such is good or some action would be one's duty), then, as a matter of logical necessity, one must be at least partly inclined to behave in certain ways rather than others. For example, if one accepts that it is one's duty to tell the truth, one must be at least partly inclined to tell the truth in relevant circumstances. As we saw above, there does appear to be something called 'weakness of will', whereby one knows what is the right thing to do, but chooses not to do it. But this, it can be argued, does not conflict with moral internalism, as the latter only requires one to be at least partly inclined to tell the truth when one recognises that it is the right thing to do. One argument for moral internalism is that having the inclinations appropriate to your moral views is a mark of sincerity: if you made the relevant moral statements and did not have those inclinations, you could quite reasonably be called insincere. You wouldn't 'really believe' the views that you appeared to be expressing in your moral utterances. Although not every contemporary moral philosopher accepts moral internalism, it appears to be the majority view. It could be regarded as a less extreme version of Plato's view that anyone who knows what is good will necessarily pursue it, though unlike the latter in only requiring an inclination to pursue what one thinks to be good. 8

9 If we do accept moral internalism, then there seems to be a problem for naturalist theories. Take the example naturalist conception discussed above: 'Good' means 'conducive to human survival'. If this is right, whenever anyone says 'Capitalism is good', they mean 'Capitalism is conducive to human survival'. The trouble is that someone could coherently think that capitalism was conducive to human survival and yet not be in the least inclined to promote capitalism. Such a person would not really, sincerely, believe that capitalism was good because the true test of someone's beliefs about what is good concerns what they would be prepared to do in relevant circumstances and this person fails that test. The point can be repeated for any other naturalist definition. This is because they all define 'good' (and other moral words) in terms of factually verifiable properties and it is always possible to know verifiable facts about a thing without having any particular psychological disposition either to promote it or to suppress it. In other words, naturalism is incompatible with moral internalism. In contrast, there is certainly no lack of moral internalism in Plato's theory. For Plato thought that it was impossible in the strictest sense for someone to know what is the morally right thing to do and yet not do it. But there lies the problem: the moral internalism in Plato's view seems excessive, since, as we saw, it does not allow for weakness of will, in which people know what the right thing to do is, but are unable to bring themselves to do it. Moral internalism is very plausible, but in its moderate form, which requires only an inclination to do what one believes to be good. What about Moore's theory? Can it incorporate moderate internalism in a plausible way? This is a hard question to answer, partly because of the difficulty in understanding the theory itself. As we mentioned above, the idea of a non-natural property is a problematic one, since it is hard to understand how a property that depends purely on natural properties would not itself be natural. If we knew the answer to this question, we might be able to tell whether recognition of non-natural properties necessitates dispositions to behave in certain ways. But certainly, on the face of it, it is unclear how Moore's theory can incorporate moral internalism. So naturalism, Platonism and Moore's theory all find it difficult to handle moral motivation, at least if we are correct in supposing that the latter should be construed in terms of internalism. 4. Moral truth: concluding remarks Both of the theories mentioned at this point in the syllabus have proved unsatisfactory. Platonism cannot account for weakness of will and also seems to involve an objectionable moral elitism. Naturalism is a much more straightforward theory, but (perhaps because of this) it seems unable to do justice to the nature of moral thinking (in particular the fact that any statement of the form 'X things are good', where X stands for some verifiable property, can be coherently denied). So maybe we need some different form of theory altogether. Notice a fundamental assumption shared by both theories: that there is such a thing as moral truth. Now it might seem hard for moral philosophers to question this assumption. If moral truth did not exist, how could there be real moral standards that could rationally compel people? This seems to be a serious problem, but others may be more tractable. Indeed, as we shall see, if we decide not to think of morality in terms of (objective) truth and falsity, we entirely avoid some of the problems affecting both Platonism and naturalism. 9

10 The denial of moral truth 1. General considerations We are investigating the idea that there is no such thing as moral truth. Another way of putting this is to say that there are no moral facts. Of course, this does not mean that there are no moral opinions. That would be empirically false. The claim is rather that there is no standard of objective truth against which people's moral opinions can be judged and on the basis of which we could declare one person's opinion 'better' than another's. What reasons could be given for this? Well, one significant consideration is something that has long been noticed by anthropologists and indeed anyone with a wide knowledge of different cultures and societies: the enormous variety in moral practices and attitudes. As we noted above, there is hardly a single thing that is considered wrong in one society that has not been considered quite acceptable in some other society on Earth at another place or time. (Perhaps the only exceptions to this are murder and theft but even here there is variation in the precise form that these prohibitions take: for example, killing criminals is 'murder' in some cultures; in others it is justice.) This observation seems to support the idea of moral relativism, that morality is relative to different cultures and societies. But here there is an important distinction to be made: that between descriptive and normative relativism: DESCRIPTIVE RELATIVISM is the claim that, as a matter of fact, there is no such thing as a single morality. There are many different moralities, depending on the culture being discussed. NORMATIVE RELATIVISM is the claim that moral judgements are valid only in relation to particular cultures. A moral judgement that is valid relative to one culture may not be valid relative to another. Note that only normative relativism is a thesis of moral philosophy (specifically meta-ethics). Descriptive relativism is just a matter of plain fact. Note also that it is normative relativism, not descriptive relativism, that presents a challenge to the idea of objective truth about what is morally right and wrong. Descriptive relativism just makes a factual claim and says nothing about the validity of moral judgements as such. It seems to be true furthermore that one can be a descriptive relativist without being a normative relativist. Though descriptive relativism may suggest normative relativism, it does not entail it. One could say that although, in fact, there is no one morality that is accepted by all cultures, still there is only one morality that is actually correct. Why might one wish to adopt this view? I think the answer is linked to the issues discussed in the previous section. We found both naturalism and Platonism unsatisfactory as accounts of the nature of morality. Both take very seriously the idea of objective moral truth. This suggested the idea that taking objective moral truth seriously might be the cause of the problem. We decided that we needed to consider the more radical option of giving an account of morality that does not depend on this concept. Several possibilities have been suggested. They are known collectively as non-cognitivist theories. ('Cognition' means roughly the same as 'knowledge' and one feature of these theories is that they seem to deny the possibility of moral knowledge in any familiar sense of that phrase.) We will look at the two best-known ones: emotivism and prescriptivism. 2. Emotivism 10

11 This is the view that moral statements are more like expressions of emotion than statements of fact. The view is mainly associated with American philosopher C.L. Stevenson ( ) and British philosopher A.J. Ayer ( ). Consider the sentence 'Stealing is wrong'. Because of its grammatical form, this looks like a statement of fact that can be either true or false. If, in fact, stealing is wrong, then the sentence is true; if it is not, then it is false. The emotivist rejects this 'common sense' view. In its simplest form (as in Ayer), emotivism likens the sentence to an exclamation such as 'Stealing? Boo!' or 'Down with stealing!'. Stevenson's version of the theory is more complex, but what both have in common is the idea that the main business of such a sentence is not to say something true, but to express one's emotions or one's attitude towards something. Attitudes can of course be positive as well as negative, as in 'Hooray for honesty!', which would be an emotivist rendering of 'Honesty is a good thing'. Strengths and weaknesses of emotivism Strengths: Unlike Platonists, emotivists don't have to worry about explaining moral knowledge. For the emotivist, there are no moral facts, so there is no such thing as moral knowledge, as normally understood. There are just attitudes and feelings. Unlike naturalism, emotivism doesn't seem to be vulnerable to the open question argument. As we saw above, this argument says that no definition of 'good' in terms of natural (empirically verifiable) properties will be satisfactory, because it will always make sense to ask whether things with those properties are good. But obviously emotivism does not define 'good' and other moral words in terms of natural properties, because saying that something is good is, on the emotivist theory, a matter of expressing a positive attitude towards it, not asserting that it has some property or other. For those who accept moral internalism, emotivism seems advantageous, because (arguably) it is logically necessary that if someone has (say) a positive attitude towards something, they will be at least inclined to try to protect it, promote it etc. Weaknesses It seems that if emotivism is true, then morality is subjective, since emotions and attitudes are dependent on the individual. This would seem to create a situation in which one person's morality is as good as any other's. There seems to be a semantic problem with the theory. If 'Stealing is wrong' means the same as 'Down with stealing!' then 'If stealing is wrong then people should be punished for doing it' should mean 'If down with stealing then people should be punished for doing it' or 'If down with stealing then down with not punishing people for doing it', neither of which is even grammatical. In other words, although the theory may appear acceptable for 'stand alone' moral sentences, it does not seem to work for cases in which the moral sentence is contained as a subordinate clause within a complex sentence. 11

12 3. Prescriptivism Moral prescriptivism was developed by the British philosopher R.M Hare ( ). Whereas emotivism likens moral sentences to exclamations, prescriptivism likens them to imperatives or commands. The theory treats moral claims as essentially action-guiding. Consider a command such as 'Cook the dinner!'. To understand what this sentence means, it is necessary to understand its link with action, to know, in other words, that the utterance of this sentence would most likely be used to try to get the person to whom it was addressed to cook the dinner. Could we say 'You morally ought to cook the dinner' just means the same as 'Cook the dinner!'? Clearly not, for a command might be given for reasons other than moral ones. (I might order you to cook the dinner just because I'm hungry and I know that if I order you, you'll do it.) If moral sentences are commands, they must be very special kinds of commands. According to Hare, what distinguishes moral sentences from more basic commands is that they are universalisable. What this means is that a competent speaker who makes a moral statement sincerely must be prescribing what should be done, not just in the current situation by the person they are currently addressing, but in all similar situations by all people similarly placed. Here is an example. Suppose I say 'Morally speaking, you ought to cook my dinner'. How on Hare's view would this be different from just saying 'Cook my dinner!'? The answer is that in the former case, and not the latter, I not only tell you to cook my dinner; I also convey the fact that I would give the same order, or make the same 'prescription', to anybody similarly placed to you in any similar situation. Here the word 'similar' must be taken to mean 'similar in all morally relevant respects'. To fill out the example, we would have to imagine why I might say that you were morally obliged to cook my dinner. Perhaps I have been cooking your dinners for a week and, out of fairness, I think it's now your turn. In that case what is meant by saying 'anybody who is similarly placed to you in any similar situation' means (roughly) anyone who has been having his dinners cooked by another person for rather a long period of time and is now able to reciprocate' or, more generally (if vaguely) anyone who owes a 'moral debt' to some other person. This account works well for moral statements prescribing behaviour for the person whom one is addressing ('Morally, you ought to...'). But, as it stands, it will not accommodate statements describing what people other than the addressee ought to do (e.g. 'I ought morally to...', 'David Cameron ought morally to...') Hare deals with this by invoking what in grammar is called a 'first person imperative', a 'command' addressed to oneself, e.g. 'Let me be good today'. The latter (when combined with the universalisation requirement), might be a good analysis of 'Morally, I ought to be good today'. For 'Morally, David Cameron ought to be good today', we could perhaps say something like: 'Let David Cameron or anyone in a situation similar to his in all morally relevant respects, be good today' (a formulation that already includes universalisation). To summarise: for Hare, moral sentences are commands or prescriptions of a special kind: ones that can be generalised to apply to all relevantly similar people in all relevantly similar circumstances. Strengths and weaknesses of prescriptivism Strengths Some of the strengths of prescriptivism are the same as those already identified for emotivism: As in emotivism, morality is still considered to be fundamentally a matter of attitudes and 12

13 so there is no need for any explanation of 'moral knowledge'. It is not vulnerable to the open question argument, unlike naturalism. Other strengths (not shared with emotivism): Because it incorporates universalisation, it seems to be more objective than emotivism. Moral commands need to be right not just for me, but also for all others similarly placed. For those sympathetic to moral internalism, prescriptivism is perhaps the most attractive theory of all, as it directly links acceptance of moral statements to action. If 'Stealing is wrong' is to be analysed as a universalised version of 'Let me not steal!', it follows that no-one could sincerely accept this moral statement unless they had at least some inclination not to steal. Weaknesses Although we mentioned as a strength that prescriptivism seems more objective than emotivism, it may be thought that it is not objective enough, since its basis still lies in subjective desires. The rest of this section will look at two particular issues that arise in relation to theories that deny the possibility of moral truth. 4. Judging other cultures As already mentioned, moral practices vary enormously from one society or culture to another. What should our attitude be to cultures that take a different view on particular points of morality from that taken by our own? It is usually taken as a mark of sensitivity and sophistication to exercise a certain tolerance in relation to the divergent practices of other cultures. This is certainly true of such matters as etiquette and religious practices. But morality seems to be different in the eyes of most people. Consider the practice of depriving women of education. This is morally abhorrent to western societies. But in certain cultures, it is treated as mandatory. The question is whether, on the sort of meta-ethical views we have been considering, we are justified in claiming it to be morally wrong, given its endorsement by these other cultures. Certainly we can say how much we dislike such practices: not only would we (nowadays) be loath to adopt them ourselves, but also we are appalled by their being practised in other cultures, perhaps to the extent that we want to take positive steps to prevent them from happening. But that is not the same thing as saying that they are morally wrong. Or is it? Contemporary emotivist Simon Blackburn (b. 1944) thinks that those who adopt the emotivist view (he prefers to call it 'expressivist') are perfectly entitled to describe moral sentences as 'true' or 'false' in a non-relative way. Consider Blackburn's own example of a member of the Taliban who sincerely asserts 'Women should not be educated'. Is his sentence or assertion true? Most of us would say not, because we strongly profess and adhere to different moral standards on these matters. But the relativist about moral truth may want to say that the Taliban member's statement is 'true for him' and 'false for us', while our contrary statement that women should be educated is 'true for us' but 'false for him'. Blackburn will have none of this. He thinks that to describe the Taliban member's statement as 'true for him' is to grant it some sort of merit when it has none. Furthermore, he does not think that expressivism commits us to describing the statement in this way. If we were to do so, we would be showing some kind of tolerance for the Taliban member's attitudes. But this tolerance 13

14 is itself an attitude, one that might be expressed in a moral statement, such as 'We should be (somewhat) tolerant of the moral views of other cultures'. And no meta-ethical theory (Blackburn would say) implies anything about what particular substantive moral views we should or should not have. To suppose otherwise would be to make the mistake of collapsing the distinction made right at the start of this guide between meta-ethics on the one hand and substantive moral theory and applied ethics on the other. That would be fundamentally misguided, since the meanings of moral words (which are the concern of meta-ethics) have no definite bearing on the issue of what particular things are right or wrong. Blackburn's point is well taken. There is certainly a type of moral relativism, a favourite bugbear of the Church and certain sections of the media, that would not be entailed by any form of noncognitivism. It is precisely the type that Blackburn has in his sights here, a view which demands from us an attitude of complete tolerance of other cultures' different (and perhaps to us abhorrent) moral standards. Blackburn is right to say that this is itself a substantive moral view and no metaethical view about the meanings of words could force it on us. On the other hand, phrases like 'true for a' or 'true relative to a' are really technical terms and can be used by a theorist in any way she wishes, as long as she makes her meaning clear. In saying that some sentence is true for a Taliban member but not for us, she does not have to be commending the sentence. (She will probably only commend those sentences that are true for her, the theorist.) And if, as some meta-ethicists believe, the concept of relative truth is useful in their discipline, then they are entitled to use it without being accused of moral relativism in any 'bad' sense. We might call them 'semantic moral relativists' as distinct from 'substantive moral relativists'. 5. Moral progress and moral mistakes Both concepts referred to in this sub-heading are somewhat problematic. A (semantic) moral relativist will probably reject them if they are intended to be understood in any objective sense. What is a mistake relative to one person or culture may be morally correct relative to another. And how one conceives of moral progress depends on what one's particular moral ideals happen to be. (For example, moral progress may involve taking a more compassionate and 'therapeutic' attitude to criminals according to one ideal, but taking a more retributive or retaliatory approach on another.) If moral relativism is right, then neither view is objectively more correct than the other. However, it is perhaps time to introduce a certain caveat. There are many different kinds of relativist theories and the distinction between semantic relativism and substantive relativism is by no means the only important one. It is possible to take the view that morality does ultimately depend on subjective preferences, wishes or attitudes, but that these preferences need to conform to certain conditions if they are to be considered an adequate basis for moral principles. We have already mentioned Hare's idea that such preferences must be 'universalisable'. Even more frequently encountered is the suggestion that they must be rational. This is usually understood to mean that they are the sorts of preferences that would survive some process of reflection which satisfies certain requirements, such as sensitivity to the facts, correct employment of the rules of logic and of evidential standards and so on. On this view, what is morally right relative to a given individual or society is not simply what that individual or society prefers, but what they would prefer if they deliberated as rationally as possible. It might be that if we were to adopt this more sophisticated theory, we might find that more agreement about standards of right and wrong was possible. It has even been suggested that maximum rationality, together with the possession of maximum relevant information, might eliminate all disagreement. In that case, the idea of an objective moral mistake would seem to be a valid one. However, there are good grounds for scepticism about this 14

15 suggestion. For it seems very possible that two people could agree about all the facts and both be perfectly rational when discussing, say, euthanasia, but still disagree about whether or not it is morally right or wrong in a given situation. (You may want to consider whether this is really true when you come to examine a specific moral issue in detail.) Moral decisions 1. Introduction Over the centuries, three main traditions have developed for theorising about moral concerns: Utilitarianism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics. We can illustrate the differences between the three main approaches by means of a concrete example: say, a situation in which you have to decide whether to grant a terminally ill person s wish to die. I don t want to discuss this issue in detail, but only to use it to clarify the difference between the three approaches. UTILITARIANISM will consider the consequences of granting the person s wish for them and anyone else affected. Consequences are assessed in terms of people s well-being. If the action produces the best overall consequences for people s well-being, then the utilitarian considers it morally right. DEONTOLOGY will consider whether in granting the person s wish you would be conforming to moral rules that seem intuitively correct, e.g. Do not kill. Deontologists think that these rules need to be adhered to, irrespective of their consequences, for the most part. VIRTUE ETHICS will consider whether the act would be the kind of thing that a virtuous person would do, e.g., would granting the person s wish be the sort of thing that a kind person would do or the sort of thing that a cruel person would do? 2. Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a theory particularly associated with philosophers writing in English. Hints of utilitarianism can be found in the writings of Thomas Hobbes ( ) and David Hume ( ), but the originator of the doctrine is usually considered to be Jeremy Bentham ( ) who famously thought that the aim of morality should be to seek 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number', a characteristic utilitarian idea. The theory was defended and further developed by John Stuart Mill ( ) and Henry Sidgwick ( ). In our own day, the most famous utilitarian philosopher is the Australian Peter Singer (b. 1946), particularly well-known for his application of the theory to the issue of our treatment of non-human animals. Utilitarian ethics emphasises consequences above all else. The point of morality, according to the utilitarian, is to maximise the balance of good consequences over bad consequences (for those affected by our actions). Different versions of the theory are generated by giving different answers to these two questions: (a) What exactly is supposed to be evaluated for its consequences: individual actions or overall practices and rules? (b) How do we tell when, and to what extent, consequences are good or bad? Act utilitarianism 15